Sunday, October 7, 2007

The greatest test track on earth

Well it has been a little while since I last updated, but I wanted to make sure that we had solidified our plans before I told everyone what our plans are. The last 2 days of the World Finals meet were canceled because of weather, mostly wind and a little bit of rain. As it turns out, there is a private meet being held this week, which if we wanted to be a part of, we could. After talking through the pros and cons of staying another week to run, we have decided that we will stay and continue to run the car. Those of us who would be able to work it into our course schedules will be staying, and the others will be with us in spirit.

Interestingly, this meet will be observed by the FIA, the record-holding body for international records. Unlike the U.S. records, there is in fact a class dedicated to fuel cell powered vehicles. The current record for this class currently sits at approximately 83 mph. While this record would be nice to set, our goal is still to go faster than the Buckeye Bullet 1, which set a U.S. record at 314.9 mph.

So, we will continue to update this week to keep everyone informed of our progress, and I'm hoping to keep up, as long as internet access is available. We hope to make a test run this afternoon, which will be made on the track set up for World Finals.

Buckeye Bullet

The student run team is based out of the Center for Automotive Research at The Ohio State University. Currently the team is in the process of designing a brand new land speed vehicle. This new vehicle branded the Buckeye Bullet 3 is anticipated to be significantly faster than previous cars. In the summer of 2010, the team built a battery powered land speed streamliner (BB2.5), that broke the previous world record held by the Buckeye Bullet 1. Each of the vehicles are run on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.